1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a process for the manufacture of cellular or honeycomb core structures from web materials such as steel, aluminum, paper or like sheets.
2. Prior Art
There are known various processes for making honeycomb core structures which find wide application in air-craft construction and in the manufacture of furnitures, buildings, structural elements and the like. A typical example of such known process comprises the steps of applying spaced parallel lines or bands of an adhesive to one or more continuous webs of material, cutting the webs into individual sheets or strips of a predetermined length and width, superimposing the sheets upon one another in a stack with the adhesive bands staggered with respect to those on the immediately preceding and succeeding sheets by a distance equal to half of the distance or pitch between the consecutive adhesive bands on each sheet, compressively curing the stacked sheets, cutting the cured sheets into unexpanded cue block lengths, and finally expanding the blocks into cellular structure products, as disclosed for example in Japanese Patent Publications 51-23548 and 52-20950. These prior art processes have a drawback in that they are both time-consuming as the stacking and cutting operations are separately performed and costly due to considerable material losses arising from cutting the webs into individual strips of a width corresponding to the thickness of a resultant honeycomb product.
Japanese Patent Publications 53-133276, 53-134074 and 53-134076 disclose processes which are substantially analogous to but advantageous over the aforementioned prior art in that both cutting and stacking the sheet materials are performed in a continuous mode of operation, hence with improved productivity. However, such known processes have still much to be desired in respect of speed in cutting and stacking the sheet materials and furthermore involve rather complicated equipment arrangements.